In the studio: A lesson on thinking in shape

Hello again, and thanks for returning to catch up on my blog.  This week, I am going to show you one of my favorite lessons for learning about complex and varied shapes.  The shapes are made up of many objects but still read as one interesting passage of darks or lights. This will help you in getting past the idea of painting everything that is possible to paint about a subject. Editing and interpretation are essential for making personal and creative works of art. Both paintings are based on value drawings, which you will notice only focus on tying the dark shapes of the shadows on the object or the darks shapes themselves together.  I try to make this dark shape have movement across the painting and in both paintings, I began the painting by just painting the dark shape against pure white paper.  In the second painting of the building and the people working on the boat, I put in washes for the sky and foreground, finishing the piece while making sure that these latter washes did not take away from the focus of shadow shapes.

I have drawn the rider on the horse very large and then attached to both sides the cattle.  I lined the cattle up from left to right and have them move into the distance on the right.  I tried really hard to get the perspective on the horse and rider moving into the picture plane and left out details that I really didn’t need.  Plus, I was making this up from memory.

I painted the rider and horse using warm cool contrasts, and let the paint merge on the paper, and since I am not good with horse legs, I attached the bottom of the horse to weeds.  Don’t you just love burying things in the weeds.  The cows I just painted in a very basic wash of ultramarine blue and burnt sienna and again I attached the cows to shadows, which helps to give them a more representational quality.  Notice that on the right side of the painting the cows just fade off into the distance.

This drawing is only focused on the shadows, simple windows and a few little things like the pole in the foreground.  I did put shadows from the chimneys to indicate the direction of the light.  Again, this is a drawing which can lead to a complete painting, just shadows against white paper.

Here is the painting with just the shadows and dark pieces finished and I am happy with it just a dark shape against light background.  I basically, painted this in cobalt blue and permanent rose washes, with a few additions of raw sienna for reflected light and tie ins to the ground. 

Here is the finished painting with a simple blue sky and intense yellow green foreground.  I think if you start your painting thinking about the basic shapes and trying to attach the shapes into one readable dark, you will find your finished painting will a more creative tone.